National Hospital Available Beds for Emergencies and Disasters (HAvBED) System

Public Health Emergency Preparedness

This resource was part of AHRQ's Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) program, which was discontinued on June 30, 2011, in a realignment of Federal efforts.

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II. Purpose/Objectives

Develop, implement and evaluate a demonstration real-time electronic bed tracking/monitoring system that augments a system/region's ability to care for a surge of patients. This will be accomplished by meeting the following objectives:

Produce an analysis of available information of systems currently in use and incorporate essential elements of surge capacity data from these systems, taking into consideration security issues.

Define, through expert consensus, bed capacity and a standard for consistent counting of available beds.

Develop a mechanism to connect and report data to the OASPHEP SCC as well as State and regional emergency management and command centers. Develop a process for integration with emergency medical services.

Whether a mechanism for transporting, tracking, and reporting patient status and location is feasible, beneficial and fiscally sustainable.

Development of algorithms to assist local, State and national planners in making decisions for use of alternate care facilities capabilities and capacities.

Discuss developing a mechanism for testing the use of the system with State, local and national command centers.

The goal of this project was to determine the feasibility of bringing together common data elements (and/or easily adapted data elements) from within each of these systems through an interface, after the specific useful data elements and their definitions were identified (including GIS) and display formats were developed through collaborative input. Once the feasibility was determined and data elements identified, an interface was created that could be accessed and managed by OASPHEP SCC. Through collaborative input and a secure server, relevant data elements could then be made accessible to regional/local emergency management offices. This Web accessible interface system was tested by the collaborators during the development and implementation phases.